V. Your constitution and religion are both of a piece-one would not have been perfect without the other. C. We think fo-whereas your conftitution and religion are at variance-a Republic under the denomination of priestcraft is only free by halves-but hark! the drum beats-Signor, farewell !—Padre, adieu! perhaps the time is not far remote when truth will demolish all our private opinions, and fpread, like the arms of the Republic, over the face of the earth! V. He is gone off like a cannon P. The joy of the wicked is but for a moment. Son, we have both finned in liftening to this French Atheist-let us forget what we have heard, and go to Vefpers. The Bard. POETRY, to deserve our attention, muft either be regular and faultlefs; or it must be irregularly great, and poffefs transcendent beauties, to attone for eminent defects. The moderns are chiefly of the former character, and the ancients of the latter. It by no means follows from this diftinction, that the moderns are never fublime, or the ancients never regular and equal; but the early age of fociety (which is the ancient, let it happen at any period) is most favourable to Genius, and the advanced state of mankind to Tafte, It was in our own times that Gray writ the Ode which makes my present subject -it is entitled The Bard, and poffeffes much much of the ancient fire combined with modern taste. Perhaps it is this combination which weakens the fublimity of the poem; for in this respect it is very inferior to Dryden's Alexander's Feaft: but when the regularity of the ftructure is confidered, and the exquifite polish with which the whole is finished, we ought to confider it as one of the most perfect productions of our time. This perfection will plainly appear upon a curfory review (for I mean no more) of its fable-ftructure-verfification-fentiments-and general effect. Story. A fmall event is fufficient for an ode, but yet there should be fome event. Compare the odes which are dramatic, to thote which are only fentimental, and the fuperior effect of story will be very appaEven the Elegy in the Country Church rent. Church-yard, beautiful as it is, depends as much upon the fcenery, and the little incident which makes its fable, as upon the fentiment and poetry-we have the latter in other pieces of the fame poet, which wanting the former, fail of exciting our feelings, and commanding our attention. This Poem has incident fufficient to make it interesting, but not enough to be oppreffed by adventure. It is not only interesting, but pictorefque, in an eminent degree an old Bard fitting on the edge of a precipice that overhangs a torrent, addreffing his prophetic ftrains to a king who defcends a mountain at the head of his army, is a subject as proper for painting as poetry. The scenery is farther enriched by ideal perfonages, and romantic fplendour is added to natural magnificence. The conducting of the story is altogether epic-it begins in the midst of a great incident-it informs of all all that is neceffary to be known preceding-it looks into futurity, and ends triumphantly. The incidents of the English History, which it was necessary to introduce, although flightly touched, yet it is done" with a master's hand and poet's fire." The Structure Is a regular pindaric. What the critics term the ode, epode, and antiftrophe, are each divided into three parts; every line of the ode has precifely the fame number of fyllables with the correfponding line of the epode and antiftrophe-the rhymes are in the fame places, and the fifteenth and feventeenth lines of the third stanza of the ode, having a word in the middle which rhymes with one at the end, are answered by lines of the fame structure in the third flanzas of the epode and antiftrophe. If there be any merit in this regularity, the poem has the fullest claim to |